Camera - lens incompatibility

[Frank Kolwicz]

And I mean Canon's current/modern AF lenses and digital bodies.

All that stuff I went through with my 500/4.5L and 5dII now turns out to be some kind of odd-ball incompatibility, not across all the models, just some particular bodies and lenses, others of the same model usually work just fine together.

The tech who recently ran an evaluation on my 500L *now* tells me that certain individual Canon bodies just don't work right with certain Canon lenses and, if both were currently supported by Canon, sending both back for service would result in the incompatibility being fixed by the judicious swapping of some circuit boards in one or the other or both.

The existence of such incompatibility is news to me and I've been a Canon user for more than 25 years. I wonder what other kinds of bombshells lurk in Canon's back rooms.

Given the world of computers we now live in and these modern cameras are hardly more than computers, I fail to see how dedicated software (camera/lens) can fail to be able to fully integrate with each other. It's not nearly as complicated as the workings of the web and email and all the other daily miracles we take for granted across OSs, manufacturers, languages, decades and specailizations, but still Canon's manufacturing standards allow for two examples off the assembly line to fail to work together properly.

[Glenn NK]

Some related articles:

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/07/autofocus-reality-part-1-center-point-single-shot-accuracy

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/07/autofocus-reality-part-ii-1-vs-2-and-old-vs-new

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/07/autofocus-reality-part-3a-canon-lenses

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/08/autofocus-reality-part-3b-canon-cameras

[Frank Kolwicz]

Thanks, Keith.

Perhaps a camera firmware update might fix the incompatibility that I'm experiencing, since it seems like the adjustment is made solely in the camera's AF circuits.

Frank

[Frank Kolwicz]

GlennNK:

Thanks for the great reference! That was a big help in understanding Canon's phase/contrast detection systems and accurately portrays what I've seen with the 500/4.5 vs the 600/4 IS lenses I've used.

Unfortunately, it doesn't tell me what I can do about getting the 500 to hit the critical focus sweet spot instead of routinely focussing just in front of it - except replacing the lens, of course, and using LV as I have been doing for subjects that aren't moving too fast for that older contrast detection system to work with.

[Frank Kolwicz]

The firmware update solved the problem!

I'm going to put this up as a new topic in case someone who isn't watching this thread might need to see it.